


The Devil's Tools

by Eerie



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eerie/pseuds/Eerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bunny allows himself a little alone time in the Turkish Baths. Except that he's not alone at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil's Tools

Our setting out from the Albany to the baths that evening passed more as a turbulent whirlwind than a short trip by hansom. It was freezing, and bits of snow were just beginning their descent from the cloud-blackened sky. Raffles and I dashed from the curb to the bath entrance as soon as the carriage was stopped and the bundled but red-faced driver paid (and generously tipped by Raffles as well, I noticed). The stark contrast between the merciless chill of the late January winds that had buffeted our hansom with its unfortunate cabbie the entire way to Northumberland Avenue and this new soothing balm was exceptional, and I breathed a shaky sigh of relief to be indoors again. My muscles had been aching all day from the wintry midnight ‘excursion’ Raffles and I had taken last night to Lord Benson’s sleeping estate. Though my mind was sufficiently content that the pair of us would be in funds for a good three months to come, my poor, abused body did not see it that way. I would certainly benefit from the steam.

I instantly approached the attendant at the counter, fumbling for my billfold at my jacket’s lining. After being all but bodily pushed aside, Raffles instead paid the admittance of us both, as usual, and we began the process of unshoeing ourselves in the boot room.

“Why do you never let me pay?” I asked. “It’s the least I can do for being the one to suggest coming in the first place!”

Raffles smiled that old devilish smile of his and shook his head, though he didn’t look up from his task. “It’s hardly a bother, old chap.”

“But, Raffles—”

“The idea was just as attractive to me as it was to you, Bunny. It’s not as if you’ve dragged me here.” He paused to stretch, and his elbows audibly cracked in emphasis.

Though at the peak of his physical condition, I knew the cold and the strain of scaling walls had gotten into Raffles as much as it had into me. He would never admit it in so many words, but I knew him well enough by now to understand that there was a reason he despised cracking cribs in the darker months.

I didn’t bother to argue any further as we headed into the changing room. The lad mopping the floor visibly jumped at our entrance. 

Raffles shot him an amused smile. “Slow evening?”

“Yessir,” the young man answered. “You’re the first gentlemen I’ve seen a good hour or so now. Weather’s too dreadful for most folks to be out.”

“Indeed it is. Tell me, is there a masseur readily available? I feel like skipping the sweat and heading straight for the shampoo first.”

“I’ll see that he’s informed, sir.” With that, the young man propped his mop against the wall and darted from the room toward the main lobby.

“Well then! Looks like we’ll have ourselves the royal treatment if the house is otherwise empty.” Raffles rubbed his hands together in anticipation before snatching up a towel and locating a vacant locker that suited him. The young man was right; there were many to choose from.

I followed suit, found myself a locker adjacent to him, and began to undress. In no time we were passing through the cooling gallery, towels about our waists, and down the stairs toward the hot rooms. The place was all but deserted.

Inside the dimly lit bathing room, I made myself comfortable on one of the marble slabs that served as a bench. Raffles didn’t bother to sit; an attendant had quickly joined and greeted us. I watched as Raffles abandoned his towel on another bench and, following the guiding gesture of the attendant, stretched himself out facedown on the table.

The steam was thick already: an opaque pearly haze that went far to please my senses and usher me into a state of relaxation. I didn’t even mind waiting until Raffles had freed up the table for my own much-needed massage. I contented myself to lean into the corner and close my eyes, listening to the splash of water as the attendant poured it over my friend.

Raffles had paid the deluxe service fee for the both of us, and after his shampoo and rinse I was beginning to feel a bit antsy for my turn. But the attendant had brought out the oils, and it would be a good thirty minutes more before my own muscles would cry with relief. The man had asked me if I would like to retire to the adjoining hot room rather than wait, but I’d refused. I would be patient.

I decided to stretch out on my side and doze a bit. The room had been relatively quiet but for the sound of a decorative fountain gushing nearby. But as I shut my eyes, prepared to drift off, I heard Raffles moan as the attendant began his work with the oils. 

Raffles, usually so calm and subdued in the baths, the man with a score of vices and no stranger to as many pleasures, was oddly enough—to my mind—not the type to vocalize. I discovered this some time ago. Raffles was the type given to introspection and quietude when he was at peace with the world around him.

So it was a bit of a shock, to say the least, when I heard that wanton sound escape his throat. What’s more, it didn’t stop there.

I must insist that I am not proud of whatever it was that stole over me in that moment. Surely I was not in my right mind for acknowledging it, but all the same, I did little to stop it from affecting me. And affect me it did.

I had seen Raffles stripped bare in these very rooms before, but always have I averted my ever-active imagination to other avenues of thought during those times. I had to. Raffles was every ounce the cricketer in his pale, athletic form, and I would be lying were I to say it wasn’t at all beautiful. There were times I found myself comparing his body to those of the other patrons—and admittedly even my own once or twice (it was inevitable)—and Raffles always emerged superior. He was lithe, muscular without bulkiness, and possessed a graceful stealth borne of a dark secret of which I—I alone!—possessed a shared knowledge. Oh yes, Raffles was indeed a perfect specimen if ever there was one.

Shame, the usual reaction to this train of thought that now bore me away in its hedonistic tracks, didn’t come over me. I was tired, sore, and filled with some questionable sense of self-worth after last night’s success. I felt I needed the rewards; times had been getting hard for me recently with the debt collectors and such. I had been harassed and harried, and it was nice to slip away from all of that. To get out of touch with the real world and its hard clutches and simply pursue pleasure. To live like Raffles himself.

The masseur must have found a tender knot in that lean back, for the sharp intake of breath through teeth greeted my ears next. 

When Raffles sighed and murmured, “Ahh yes, there. Just a bit harder…” followed by another delicious moan, I was undone, a slave to some wicked spell in the form of salacious visions that blossomed behind my eyes. They were of the type I usually fought to keep away during my weaker nights, lonely in my bed…

I found myself fully aroused faster than I could have imagined possible, and was absently thankful I had been facing the wall. I allowed my hand, already resting near my groin, to traverse those final few inches to sweep slowly over my altered state through the towel. My own audacity thrilled me with that touch, and I had to bite the inside of my lip to stop myself from moaning in concert. Raffles managed to continue that little service for me.

And god! the way he moaned! I can barely describe how it filled my body with fire; I believe I could have spent myself just listening to that sinful sound! Had he any idea of the effect it was having? And what would he think of me then? Would he laugh at me or divorce himself from my existence forever? No, I could hardly think about any of that. But for the immoral degradations going on in my mind, I could hardly think at all. 

I managed, rather miraculously, to find a balance between the filthy things Raffles was doing to me in my mind and what I was doing in the real world. Though I could see neither Raffles nor the attendant, I was sure that I was not being observed. I risked everything on that assumption. I had loosened the towel a bit and was able to fit my hand discreetly inside its folds. So I carried on, defiling myself further with each firm but steady thrust of my hand and caring less about it.

And Raffles carried on in that oblivious manner of his on the table, alternating between sighs and sharp gasps. I imagined it was myself who administered the touches to elicit those sounds. And I imagined it was his wonderful fingers on me rather than my own. His lips would be open, gasping, his chest rising and falling over a racing heart, his eyes burning into mine as he moved with me, playing me like a brand new game. But I, oh I would control him just as much, if not more so!

“Aahhh. _Bunny_ , you’re—”

And that was all I heard from his lips before my body tightened in a cresting wave of ecstasy. I believe I subconsciously stilled my hand out of some latent fear of discovery, but that didn’t stop me from riding out every last burst of it in spirit at least until all was over and my towel was positively unusable. How I harnessed the will to stay my hips from driving forward the way they wanted to was beyond all explanation.

“Bunny? Bunny, did you fall asleep?”

Raffles’s voice calling to me in an amused tone alerted me to the present, and I feigned being roused from a light nap.

“Hmm?” I called over my shoulder. “Did you say something, Raffles?”

“I was just saying that you’re going to love this. I feel worlds better.”

“Oh, yes. I believe I shall.”

“I’m glad they’ve finally got someone so competent in dealing with knots after all these years. I dare say I could go for the total massage more often.”

My own muscle aches were but a secondary concern to me now. I longed for a bath in a way I haven’t longed for one in ages. My boldness of character and the stark horror of my sheer perversity were suddenly very much upon me, and I felt immeasurably filthy. I had debased myself with fantasies of a man lying not fifteen feet from my unworthy head! And in a public place! It was too much to take in; it all felt like some terrible dream. But I knew as much as I tried to will myself awake, it would do no good.

“I think that will suffice,” Raffles said as he shifted to get up. “My friend here has clearly been waiting too long for his turn.”

I winced as I realized I would have to stand. As fortune would have it, at least, I was very thoroughly unaroused at this point. Firmly gripping my towel to my waist, I sat up and stood to take my place on the table that Raffles had vacated. Only when I got there did I remove the towel and maneuver myself as modestly as possible onto the table’s surface. Not really knowing what I was doing anymore, I let the towel drop to the floor, where it immediately became soaked.

“Now, Bunny, look what you’ve done.” Raffles tsked his disapproval after securing his own towel, and swept himself down to retrieve it before the attendant could. “I’ll just run along and get you a fresh one. Maybe have a Sullivan in the smoking room after I stretch the newfound muscles a bit.”

I cannot convey the strange sensation that iced over my insides when Raffles fisted that towel in his hand and gave me a wink over the most knowing smirk I have ever seen on his face. In that moment I believe he did know. Everything. I could say nothing, but simply stared at him with my mouth open like a perfect fool. He always, always, had that infernal way of divining what was going on in my head and in my heart, damn him. 

A torrent of warm water splashed across my back, but the chill inside me remained.

“I’ll be back then.” With that he was out the door, and I was left to my own horrified musings.

Had he really known all the while? Or worse, was he deliberately playing me in a manner not dissimilar to my own imaginings? The latter idea was so ludicrous and bizarre I quickly cast it out of my mind. But the incessant buzzing of doubt would not leave me in peace. To say nothing of myself, something was definitely off about Raffles tonight. My visions thereafter alternated from him laughing at me through his smoke in the next room, to him dressing, hailing a cab and abandoning me there. My mood blackened by the minute, and I was unable to fully enjoy my shampoo.

My paranoid fantasies about being disgraced largely dissipated when Raffles returned, with a new towel as promised, however. There was nothing accusatory in his manner, nor indeed in his countenance. He had a fresh look about him as he sat across from me, legs stretched out, hands resting on his middle, regarding me thoughtfully through the thick steam. I quickly laid my head down onto my folded arms to avoid meeting his eyes. I didn’t want to look at him just then. Though I didn’t know how I would ever face him again. Could I simply pretend that none of it had happened? There was no other foreseeable way of dealing with this.

My massage turned out to be a godsend after all. Raffles was right; the new masseur was something of a prodigy in the art of working out kinks. Before I knew it, my time was up, and I raised myself bonelessly to my feet.

Raffles laughed at my wavering form and came to my side to steady me. “Better?” he asked as he oddly tasked himself with securing the towel about my hips for me. 

I had to resist the urge to recoil guiltily from his hands, which seemed to touch my skin more than was necessary in their simple movements, and I blushed hard even in the heat. “Um, yes. Much.”

We made our way to the cooling gallery, where I gracelessly deposited myself onto the first plush settee I saw. Raffles sat on the one opposite. A tray bearing two brandies was brought to us by a member of staff, and I downed mine in one go. When I set my glass back down, I found Raffles staring at me in surprise.

“I was thirsty,” I mumbled.

His eyebrows lifted. “Indeed.”

Raffles extracted his cigarette case from the band of his towel and offered me one, which I gratefully accepted. 

After we had finished our cigarettes, in relative silence, we decided to call it a night and headed back to the changing room. We dressed, and I suddenly despaired for having to go back out into the cold. I voiced my dismay, and Raffles merely laughed.

Before we could head out the door, Raffles left a handsome tip with strict instructions that it be left for the masseur. We were lucky to find a free hansom almost as soon as the door closed behind us. It was probably no colder than when we arrived, but it certainly felt otherwise. The snow had already stopped falling; most of whatever had landed was blown away in the continuing spastic gales.

We stopped at the Albany to drop Raffles off first. As the cab jerked to a halt at the curb, he turned to me and gave me an indecipherable look.

Then he spoke. “Would you like to come up for a nightcap?” I almost didn’t hear him for the sudden blast of arctic wind that made the horse dance and whine in agitation.

Normally when Raffles wanted to keep my company after going out for the evening, he only said as much, or simply demanded it of me. But this question, though not unusual in itself, was asked in such an uncharacteristically soft manner that I found myself momentarily dumbfounded for a reply. 

“I…think I ought to just turn in,” I answered.

Raffles smiled at me very briefly before exiting the hansom and paying the driver for the entire fare. At my look of irritation over his monetary generosity—once again—he touched his hat’s brim and informed me that I could pay him back later. Perhaps tomorrow night. And then he whisked around and disappeared through the door that the porter had been holding open for him.

I knocked against the top of the carriage and we jolted back into motion. As I made the journey back to my flat, I wondered what Raffles had had in mind. I suppose it was inevitable I would find out the following evening.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Raffles kink meme.


End file.
